Coldesthttp://coldestgame.com/site7
enNot Dead Yethttp://coldestgame.com/site7/content/not-dead-yet
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Well, not completely. As you can see, nothing has actually happened here in quite a while, and honestly I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. I've gotten to a point in my life where there's enough other stuff going on that I'm not as willing to devote the enormous number of hours required to make meaningful progress on a project as large as Coldest. I've been sad to leave the project in this unfinished state, but at the same time it was a great learning experience and I'm proud of what I accomplished on it.</p>
<p>The site has been migrated to Drupal 7, and in the process some major parts of it have been dropped. I'm also not willing to spend a ton of time migrating over content that couldn't be easily handled by the migration code. Also, the SMF forum integration module doesn't even work in Drupal 7 so I'm afraid the forums are pretty much dead as well. For the moment those pages are still available at their old locations, but since Drupal 6 has been out of support for quite a while I'm going to have to take it down at some point.</p>
<p>I don't imagine many people are paying enough attention to the site at this point to even notice this post, but if you are then that's awesome and I wish I had better news for you. Thanks for following my over-ambitious project all these years. :-)</p>
</div></div></div>Sun, 06 Nov 2016 17:34:45 +0000cybertron139 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/content/not-dead-yet#commentsSo, 2013 Happenedhttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/so-2013-happened
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>And not a single update to the site or the git repo for Coldest. "What gives?", you may ask.</p>
<p>Well, 2013 was an...interesting...year for me. Some of it was expected, some not. To start off, I spent the first half of the year recovering from a shoulder surgery. When just using a mouse is difficult or even impossible, game development is not an ideal activity.</p>
<p>That was the planned part. My shoulder had been bad for close to a decade and the time had come to do something about it. Everything went perfectly, and my recovery was right on schedule.</p>
<p>About the time life was getting back to normal, the unexpected excitement happened. On my seventh work anniversary I was informed that I had 30 days to find a new job in the company, and if I was unsuccessful then my services would no longer be needed. I was unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Sounds bad, right? No job, no income, no clue that this was coming sounds like it should add up to a pretty bad time. And for a while, it was. But as it turns out, I have some skills that are in pretty high demand in the software development world, and my previous employer had <i>just</i> made me aware of that about six months before I was laid off. In retrospect, it was an incredible stroke of luck.</p>
<p>Around a year ago I started working on OpenStack as part of a big shift in my job responsibilities. It was a great fit for my interests and experience. I'm obviously a proponent of open source, and I had some experience with Python and Git which was a big help in getting up to speed on the project. Finally I was working on something that made me excited to go to work in the morning. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy coding of any type and I feel like I was doing some good work before being assigned to OpenStack, but OpenStack was the first project that felt <i>right</i>. It was the type of thing I might have chosen to work on in my spare time.</p>
<p>And I did. When my 30 days were up and I was officially unemployed, I continued my contributions to the OpenStack community even though I was no longer being paid for them. Not only was it a welcome break from resume-writing and professional networking, but I also knew there were a lot of companies hiring developers for it.</p>
<p>Long story short, I am now working for a great, fast-growing, open source company, still contributing to OpenStack and still super happy to be doing so. You can probably figure out who if you look around a little bit, but as this is a personal project with no connection to any of my employers, past or present, I'm being intentionally vague so there's no personal-professional confusion.</p>
<p>The preceding wall of text is essentially a verbose way of saying that I've been very busy for quite a while now and that hasn't been conducive to work on Coldest. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get back to it at some point and clean up some of the multitude of areas that need work, but at this point things are still settling down for me so I can't make any promises.</p>
<p>As always if I have any news to report it will be found here.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 04:55:46 +0000cybertron128 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/so-2013-happened#commentsServer Move Completehttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/server-move-complete
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>If you're reading this, your DNS has updated to point the site at the new server and everything should be functional (except the master server, which will be back up soon). Let me know if you find any problems.</p>
<p>Now if you'll excuse me, I have a VPS account to cancel...</p>
<p>Edit: The master server is up and running, and seems to be working fine.</p>
<!--break--></div></div></div>Sat, 22 Sep 2012 02:39:23 +0000cybertron127 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/server-move-complete#commentsTime for a Server Movehttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/time-server-move
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>My host for this site has screwed up my virtual server once again (which is why the master server is down), so I&#039;ve decided it&#039;s time for a change. I have a new server lined up and hopefully I&#039;ll be switched to it shortly, but until you hear otherwise assume anything you post on the site or the forums might disappear in the transition.</p>
<p>On a happier note, I have been doing some work on the game, but I can&#039;t deploy the changes to the updater until the site and master server are in good working order again.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 21 Sep 2012 01:55:48 +0000cybertron126 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/time-server-move#commentsWebsite Problems. Again. :-(http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/website-problems-again
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>My server host moved me to a new environment recently and as you may have noticed if you tried to visit the past couple of weeks, it didn&#039;t go smoothly. I&#039;ve got the basics reinstalled so the site is obviously back up, but there is still more to be done so expect problems. I&#039;m out of time to fix them right now though, and will be on vacation without internet for the next week so it will be at least that long before everything is running smoothly again.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:05:56 +0000cybertron125 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/website-problems-again#commentsForum Registration Problemhttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/forum-registration-problem
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>A problem with forum registration e-mails not getting sent was recently brought to my attention, and I believe it has now been resolved. My tests have worked, but it worked when I tested before too so apparently that doesn&#039;t mean much. For some reason it was able to send to my personal domain (which is not related to this domain in any way), but not to other little domains like GMail. I have activated a couple of accounts that were pending and hopefully those users haven&#039;t completely given up on me. :-)</p>
<p>Let me know through SourceForge if there are any further problems with registration, and my apologies for any problems this may have caused you.<br />
&lt;!--break--&gt;</p>
</div></div></div>Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:21:32 +0000cybertron124 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/forum-registration-problem#commentsSomeday I'll Learnhttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/someday-ill-learn
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Apparently my playtesting schedule is on Valve Time. My last blog post said I would be ready for playtesting soon, and our more astute readers will note that it has been almost two months since then. I did note at the time that I had a vacation coming up that would probably push things back, but I did not expect the dead hard drive that I came home to after the trip.</p>
<p>I&#039;ve got my main development system mostly put back together after plenty of time spent reinstalling and trying to recover what I could from the dead drive. Fortunately my important files are all on RAID 1 arrays so I didn&#039;t lose anything important, but there were around 230 GB of data on the dead drive that would have been time-consuming to replace. When all was said and done though, I think the only major thing I lost was my Windows game installs under Wine, which is no huge loss (especially since a number of them were in Steam, so reinstalling will be fairly simple).</p>
<p>On the brighter side, I&#039;ve gotten some feedback on the most recent build already and have addressed some of the issues that were found. I need to verify that those changes won&#039;t break something else, and then we should be looking at some playtesting again. No promises though. ;-)</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:18:12 +0000cybertron123 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/someday-ill-learn#commentsBot Builds Availablehttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/bot-builds-available
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>A bit later than expected perhaps, but bots are now available in the official builds. There were a number of sticky problems that popped up since the last post, and I&#039;ve fixed most of them. There are a couple of issues that I was not able to track down, but they aren&#039;t things I expect most people to run into so hopefully they won&#039;t be a problem.</p>
<p>Be aware that although the bots can find their way around on all the maps included, they don&#039;t work as well on complex maps. The two maps I recommend with bots are craters and riverside. Bots only use lasers and the Nemesis chassis, but are unusually accurate to compensate, so I don&#039;t recommend dueling them with only lasers (but maybe you&#039;re better than me ;-).</p>
<p>I want to have this build available for people to test a bit before organizing playtesting, but barring any more major trouble that should be happening sometime in March. I have a vacation scheduled in the middle of the month that might delay things a bit, so we&#039;ll see how it goes. Let me know of any problems in the forums. Thanks.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:12:57 +0000cybertron122 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/bot-builds-available#commentsBots Have AI Nowhttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/bots-have-ai-now
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>The server update went sort of smoothly - the site never went down for a significant period of time, but I did lose access to the server for a while due to some problems with SSH after the update. Everything seems to be working correctly again, but if you find any problems with the site, please report them [url=<a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/coldestgame/ticket/10]in">http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/coldestgame/ticket/10]in</a> this Trac ticket[/url]. Or just use the forums if you are able (but a site problem might prevent that, hence the ticket).</p>
<p>The bots are coming along nicely and I&#039;ve made a lot of progress on both the game and the bots thanks to that. The bots still aren&#039;t terribly smart, but if you crank up the difficulty they&#039;ll still eat you alive. I would love to post a video of a game with bots, but unfortunately the GLC website seems to be out of commission and nothing else that I&#039;ve tried has worked for me. Fortunately I&#039;m planning to do another release in the near future, so you should be able to try them out for yourself soon. Or you can do it now if you build the Git version.</p>
<p>Once that next release is out and has had time for people to try it, I&#039;m hoping to organize some actual playtesting on the test server. Watch this space for details. I know I&#039;ve said that before, but this time I really mean it. ;-)</p>
</div></div></div>Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:31:43 +0000cybertron121 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/bots-have-ai-now#commentsUpcoming Website Maintenancehttp://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/upcoming-website-maintenance
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>This is just a quick heads up that the website might be down for a while at some point in the near future. The Debian version I&#039;m running on the server is going out of security support shortly so I&#039;m going to have to upgrade it, and the last time I did that for this server it was down for something close to a week due to some unforeseen difficulties. I&#039;m hopeful that this one will go more smoothly, but consider this fair warning. Also, I&#039;m not sure exactly when I&#039;ll get around to doing this, so it probably won&#039;t be until 2012.</p>
<p>As far as the game is concerned, things have been going pretty well.<br />
&lt;!--break--&gt;<br />
If you try the current git version, you should find that bot AI is significantly improved (read: there actually [i]is[/i] some AI now ;-), although I haven&#039;t done a lot of testing and the chance of them being able to path successfully on tears is almost nil. The new craters map is best because there&#039;s nowhere for them to get stuck, but riverside (and maybe oneway?) should work reasonably well too. To enable bots you need to set the [b]bots[/b] cvar to something &gt; 0 and restart the server if you&#039;re already in a game. Once the bot AI is working better I plan to add a server setup screen to make it easier to add bots and select maps for locally hosted games.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:31:58 +0000cybertron120 at http://coldestgame.com/site7http://coldestgame.com/site7/blog/cybertron/upcoming-website-maintenance#comments